


Gently, now break him

by Mothwood



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Kissing, M/M, Please Be careful, Possessive Behavior, Some sibling bonding!!, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, There's age difference because one is a cannibal ghost and one is just a really stupid child soldier, Trans Ichigo, Trans Male Character, Well - Freeform, dark themes, discussions of how goddamn sad it is to be a hollow, like really. goddamn, nothing graphic, short and disconnected sections of story, some sexual content, sort of dark, the mentions of it for sure, they have issues, this is your warning ya'll it aint sunshine and rainbows, vague mentions of other characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23421466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothwood/pseuds/Mothwood
Summary: (because he is so close to snapping anyway)He used to dream of someone delicately lifting his face up to look at them, caressing his mouth oh-so-gently and then bending down to kiss him (back before he started getting into fights and he learned that people’s hands were not gentle).
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 255





	Gently, now break him

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a mix of soulmate concepts; that one going around tiktok lately with the handprint/contact mark where your soulmate touches you for the first time, and the classic your skin turns colours when you touch each other. What can I say, it sounded cool at three am. 
> 
> Little disclaimer; I am trans. I do what I want.

There is a smear of colour on Kurosaki Ichigo's face.   
  


He is by no means one of the unlucky ones who've been obviously cursed to be punched by their soulmate; no, it's not the imprint of a slap or a closed fist. It sits over his mouth, one thumb mark pressed along his upper lip and over the edge, almost like it's pulling his mouth apart to examine his teeth, malleable flesh shifting under the pressure. The rest of the mark is along the edge of his chin and under his jaw, face tilted up by one knuckle.   
  


When he was younger he used to think it might be the precursor to a kiss. He's seen movies, after all, sappy Disney romance and the louder action flicks as well. He's always preferred books.   
  


He used to dream of someone delicately lifting his face up to look at them, caressing his mouth oh-so-gently and then bending down to kiss him (back before he started getting into fights and he learned that people’s hands were _not_ gentle). It would send _fireworks_ spiralling in his stomach. It would be everything any teen would ever want the meeting of their soulmate to be. From then on their touch would leave brilliant streaks of colour on his skin that would fade away in seconds. He wonders what colour _he'd_ leave on _them_ . Soulmates are _artwork_.   
  


That was before he became truly disillusioned. First he'd hoped for someone who he could take to his mother's grave to introduce. Someone she'd be proud of him for finding.   
  


Then, just someone who _wouldn't_ blink twice at his goddamn hair colour, like it's some _neon atrocity.  
  
_

Someone who wouldn't laugh at his body or his identity. 

_Somebody._

  
  


Grimmjow sees the smudge of deep bruise-red on the Kurosaki boy's face; he doesn't think much of it. Some wound or birthmark. (Memories of soul-marks are hazy, hollows don't have them anymore. Too many souls inside, their skin would be a patchwork quilt of broken hearts.)  
  


He doesn't care. He wants a _fight_ , wants the rush of adrenaline through his veins. If Aizen- _sama_ thinks this child is such a _threat_ , a potential _enemy_ or a _challenge,_ Grimmjow _wants a piece of it_. If not, Kurosaki and the odd, hypnotic little set of marks will fill the aching empty void in his gut and heart for a little while at least.   
  


He's not prepared for Ichigo at all. Not even slightly--he smells like blood, even though he's not bleeding, reeks of it, the little shinigami girl Grimmjow sinks his hand into goes flying and Kurosaki is _still_ a stronger source of metallic crimson; he's so distracted that the girl doesn't even die straight away. Stabilises herself.   
  


Grimmjow doesn't care, Kurosaki is snarling, and he's honestly _lucky_ he's stronger and faster, or he'd be in trouble.   
  


Because he just _can't stop looking_ at the little mark.   
  


He grabs the oversized cleaver in one hand, stops the momentum short. The edge doesn't even dig into his skin much, his hierro the perfect counter to it. Brown eyes go wide, and Grimmjow lurches forward slightly, loses a little of his natural feline grace, every step _usually_ uncanny and smooth.   
  


The shinigami jerks his head back in a panic but Grimmjow's hand fits _perfectly,_ knuckle under the chin, thumb pressed to the upper lip, exerting force- his mouth parts, and Kurosaki is so stunned he doesn't even try to bite him, which is something Grimmjow honestly sort of _expected_ from the feral little shit.   
  


The boy's free hand wraps around his wrist, and there's silence, for a moment. Grimmjow can't stop staring at the way thin fingers and prominent knuckles squeeze and twitch sporadically, torn between that and the way his thumb fits that mark so _flawlessly_ , like it was _made for him_ , he wants to grab Ichigo by it forever. Every time he wants the boy's attention he can just- it feels so _correct._ Pantera snarls her approval, _eat him eat him we've finally found him keep him safe and inside where no one else can take him from us._ _  
__(There’s a little memory there, staring down at the red mark of a hand around his wrist, like something sweet and sour on his tongue, but then he looks away and the memory goes dark.)  
  
_

Ichigo shifts and Grimmjow's hand moves, and the skin he drags across is marked with searing teal-blue, the same colour as his estigma, same as the fractals in his eyes between all the sky tones. He drops the cleaver, Kurosaki gasps and drags it back to his side, they stumble a little-

Grimmjow puts both hands on his jaw and drags them up into Ichigo's searingly bright hair, sunset coloured, then back down to soft cheeks again, looks down at his arm semi-hoping the same golden to crimson hue will have been left by those fingers.   
  


It is not. The boy tries to recoil- scared, maybe, but Grimmjow tightens his grip on his face until his delicate cheekbones and sharp jaw _creak_ and Ichigo hisses in pain, goes still. His face looks so good streaked in blue, and with the pressure he just exerted the skin might even bruise but Ichigo paws at his chest, pushing at him, and that skin and the patch on his wrist are the deep void black of the edges of his hollow hole, obsidian dark, emptiness with a purple sheen. So black it _hurts_ to look at it in the center.   
  


It fades out to nothing, as does the places on Ichigo's face Grimmjow isn't holding anymore, and they make the _perfect damaged hue_ , black and cyan, and that mark he touched first has _stayed_ blue. It's _stained blue_ , it's permanent, the thought leaves him hysterically happy. Gleeful, borderline rabid in the possessive wash of _yes good yes eat him eat him.  
  
_

Ichigo gasps as Grimmjow crashes their faces together in a parody of a kiss, he even _tastes like blood_ , heady and thick and _dying,_ so mammalian and paradoxically _alive_ , and the shinigami tries to bite him but his teeth are so blunt they barely even sting at his tongue. He pulls back after sucking the boy’s lower lip between his teeth, and Ichigo's mouth is blue, even the inside of it, his tongue and cheeks as he takes in ragged breaths. He wants to cover him in it, til the only other colour on him is that fire-bright hair.   
  


The boy stares at him, red high on his cheeks, _embarrassed, how cute, when we eat him we can fix that_ and then his eyes narrow and he mumbles-

" _Bankai,_ " and Grimmjow has to step back quickly at the surge of reiatsu _it's gonna taste so good, that energy, so good to eat so filling, then I can just_ **_have him forever_ ** _and keep him my colour-_

  
  
  


He swears that Tousen will die by _his claws_ when he interrupts, ruins all of his plans to consume and keep. Grimmjow is blessed with a _vicious_ scar, thick burn that already is half-healed, but so impressive for his little baby soulmate. So weak and new. _Pretty. He can be part of us and we will let him be strong.  
  
_

Not even Aizen can take that blue mark across Ichigo's mouth away from him. No one can. Soulmates are binding and eternal. One life to the next, some say. (He doesn't know, but he _hopes_ _so_ , hopes that if he dies at the hand of some fucking _shinigami_ Ichigo is still stained with blue, has to come find him. An imprint of his presence and his effect on the world.)  
  
  
  


Ichigo comes back to the shoten with Rukia half-alive in his arms and the ocean on his skin, raw red wine stain turned _endless_ and blue, printer-ink pressed through his flesh into his very soul.

Orihime takes one, shaky look at him and her face _crumples_ into something approaching misery, and he looks right back at her and realises he’s trying not to cry, himself. Not for her, but for something else. That tiny little part of him that still hoped for something sweet, a happy ending. Renji takes Rukia from him and lays her out for Orihime to heal- golden, shining, Ichigo wonders if that’s the colour Inoue will turn someone, some day.   
  


A small vicious part of him is glad his soulmate wasn’t anyone he knew. A wider part of him knew it would never be her- he’s not interested in women at all- or, at least, he hasn’t been yet.  
  


The rest of him is _terrified, beyond fear beyond reason,_ screaming in a sonorous high pitched, constant wail that even his nasty, dark inner voice he doesn’t like thinking about is too afraid to touch.  
  


He wants his soulmate.  
  
He can never _have_ his soulmate. It’s the biggest ‘fuck you’ the world has given him since his mother died, since he was born in the wrong body. He’s fought to make his mother _proud_ , fought to _make_ his body his own- what will he have to fight to keep the _enemy who made him blue_ by his side? Soul Society will surely want to execute him. Hollow creature, following _Aizen_. Anathema to all that makes up their rules and regulations.  
  


He’s so screwed.  
  


When he gets home--back into his body and looks in the mirror, Kon is quiet, apprehensive. It feels like an aura of tension has fallen over the both of them, and Ichigo-

He touches the blue marks on his skin over his mouth, under his chin. There's no way you could possibly miss it, they're such a _blinding azure_. (He sort of loves it. What a lovely colour. It's such a pity his own colour is so-)   
  


_Hah_ , the hollow in the back of his head croons, low, amused. _That's OUR colour we left on him. You're welcome, King, isn't it so pretty?_ No. No it's not pretty, it looks like the black of necrosis, rotting flesh and bone, deepening into grave dirt and the flashes of purple skin caused by severe frostbite. He doesn't want to ever touch the espada again, see the lingering black on the inside of strong hands, over the palms and up the fingers, the streaks he left on his wrist and chest. (He wants to drag his fingers lower, wants to know what all that skin and muscle feels like under his hands, is the hole an absence of flesh or is there something there he cannot see? Are the edges of it sensitive? Will Grimmjow's tongue turn black again after another kiss, another press of mouths that feels like being claimed and consumed?)   
  


Fuck. He clenches his hands into fists on the edges of the sink, digs his nails into his palm, drops his gaze from the mirror to the taps. Slowly turns the water on- washes his face and brushes his teeth, doesn't look himself in the eyes.   
  


He shouldn't have enjoyed the fight as much as he did. He shouldn't feel this way at all. Soulmates don't always work out. Even serial killers and rapists have soulmates out there, somewhere, and he thinks this even as he pulls the covers back on his bed and slips between the sheets. 

The espada put his _fist through Rukia's guts_ and then flicked the blood off like so much stray paint, vaporised the rest with a burst of his own reiatsu--(it felt like thick honey against Ichigo's skin, warm, sticky, clinging. He sort of wanted to taste it on his tongue. Destruction, but it's so sweet.)   
  


He shouldn't _want_ to bring Zangetsu up against that white-steel sword, shouldn't want to throw Grimmjow through the air and then meet him again with a snarl, matching wild grins, make him _bleed_ and beat him fair and square. Wrap a hand around the arrancar's throat and- straddle his lap, push him down and lick blood off his chin, just. Fuck.   
  


_We could do that, lemme help. Let me help you claim him, King, he's your soulmate, OUR soulmate, I can make you strong. Make him look at us with-_ Get out of my _head_!   
  


He turns his face into his pillow and squeezes his eyes shut til it hurts, red patches blooming behind them. He just wants to _sleep.  
_ Instead he cracks open an eye, relieved when it seems that Kon has elected to sleep in with Yuzu tonight, and shamefully slides a hand down between his thighs under the blankets.   
  


(He thinks about Grimmjow biting him, wonders if sharp teeth would leave blue-tinted scars. Fuck, he wants to be covered in them, those large warm hands pressed over his hips, over his chest, around his throat. Rough voice with the hint of manic madness at the edges telling him what a _good boy_ he is, then calling him names when he shakes apart. Open him up and carve his way inside, reshape his heart and lungs to bleed and breathe just for _Grimmjow-_ )  
  


He wipes his fingers off on the outside of his pajama pants, squirms a bit at the lingering _stickiness_ between his legs. Resolves to do a load of washing in the morning.   
  


He very intently refuses to think about what he's done, what filled his mind as he did it. It's too much, too late in the night. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“You know, Ichi-nii,” Yuzu hums, soft, pushes his plate a little closer to him on the table, and he lifts his head from his hands to peer at her, still sleepy. 

  
“It sort of makes you look like art. Like one of those ‘sunset over water’ paintings. You know?” She smiles, gentle and sweet as always, and he blinks abruptly, because he remembers the day she realised what the red marks over the left side of her chest were, that her soulmate would do something so awful. She’d cried on him. Karin’s whole right hand is wine-red. He wonders if she grabs someone’s arm. She had a habit of grabbing at his wrists when she was little, to make him slow down. 

They’re all a little bit messed up. He’s seen someone with their whole throat wine red, a black eye on their face. At the bus stop. He’d seen them again months later with vivid pink instead, and the bruise was gone. They’d been smiling wide at their phone. He wonders if their soulmate got them in a chokehold.  
  


He looks at the plate. Sticky sweet honey on pancakes.   
  


He eats slowly. It tastes amazing- everything his little sister makes tastes good. He’s told her more than once she should open up a restaurant, get famous and replace Gordon Ramsey. Instead of angry yelling at shitty chefs, she can just give them the patented disappointed stare. He hasn’t seen anyone receive it and _not_ fold like wet paper.  
  


Maybe the blue is beautiful, and Grimmjow **is** _beautiful,_ but they are still a tragedy waiting to happen. He smiles at Yuzu anyway.

* * *

  
  


The grin that stretches across the espada’s face is, quite honestly, wide and _terrifying_ , and Ichigo’s body reacts to it in a way that is completely removed from fight-or-flight. Butterflies pool low in his stomach and then up his throat, gather tight in his lungs like effervescence. The bubbling hiss of a soda can being opened.   
  


Grimmjow _snarls,_ low and wild, and Ichigo reaches up to touch the heavy bone mask on his face. It has a blue smear over the teeth. He nearly _died_ when Shinji told him.  
  
“I’m gonna grind you into the _dirt_ , Kurosaki. And then I’m going to _eat_ you. And I’m gonna enjoy it _so much more_ than I ever would have as a fresh, baby hollow.” The words trail off into something that sounds suspiciously like a moan, and Ichigo stalls at the way a pink tongue drags over sharp, sharp canines. How did those not rip through his mouth when Grimmjow bit his lower lip?  
  


He doesn’t quite win that fight, but only because his mask breaks. He doesn’t believe the espada at all when he says he got rid of his arm himself. 

* * *

  
  


Ichigo comes back for him. Ichigo comes _back_ over the desert of bone, looking, before he leaves Las Noches and Hueco Mundo entirely. Grimmjow claws his way out of the sand, hauls his half dead ass out, just for him, _just for that_. He can feel the fights still happening far away, on the other side of the sunny shithole Aizen made for them.  
  


Ichigo folds his hands along Grimmjow’s jaw, and he opens his eyes, sticky with half dried blood and sand, and when Ichigo smiles it’s rough and tired. He’s never looked so goddamn pretty, Grimmjow thinks, and hauls Pantera up out of the sand as well. Fucking gorgeous. Next time, he’ll fight his soulmate to the death and eat his still-warm flesh. Gnaw on his bones. Hollows always go for _loved ones_ first, and even if they never met their soulmate in life, they’ve been known to _track them down._ Find them, somehow. But Ichigo didn’t come to eat _him_ , even though he could have. The starburst of violent black-red reiatsu far above where Grimmjow hid himself said as much.   
  
When Ichigo pulls him up, he goes willingly. Shoves his face into orange hair, probably smears blood and sand in it, but the boy doesn’t protest. _Our boy,_ Pantera purrs. _Ours._ Blue marks on his skin from _Grimmjow’s_ fingers. It’s a beautiful form of ownership. If Ichigo gets the woman to heal him up, he thinks he’d like to fight at his side against Aizen. Against his arrancar siblings. _Fuck them all,_ he made this boy _blue_ . He made this boy _his._


End file.
